Monday, April 18, 2016

In the hours before they took the stage for their March 29 press conference, Democratic attorneys general received a secret briefing from two top environmentalists on pursuing climate change dissenters.

Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Accountability Institute’s Matt Pawa spent 45 minutes each providing talking points behind the scenes on “the imperative of taking action now” and “climate change litigation,” according to a cache of emails released over the weekend by the free market Energy & Environmental Legal Institute.

For climate change groups, the New York press event was the culmination of four years of planning and advocacy in support of an explosive proposition: using the legal system to link fossil fuel firms and others challenging the catastrophic global warming consensus to fraud and even racketeering, the emails and other documents show.

The effort paid off. At the press conference, which included former Vice President Al Gore, a coalition of 16 Democratic attorneys general and one independent — Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker — announced that they would use the power of state government to explore legal avenues to challenge climate change dissent.

Four of the attorneys general have reportedly launched investigations into Exxon Mobil Corp., and Mr. Walker has issued a subpoena for 10 years worth of climate change documents and communications from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank.

Mr. Walker also issued a subpoena last month to Exxon Mobil, citing the territory’s laws against racketeering. The company filed a motion Wednesday to block the subpoena in Texas state court.

David Schnare, legal counsel for E&E, called on the coalition, operating under the name AGs United for Clean Power, to reveal its relationship with the climate change movement.

“We call on these AGs to immediately halt their investigation and lay out for the public the full extent of this collusion, producing all records or information provided them in briefings or other work with the outside activists, including those they are trying to keep secret through a Common Interest Agreement,” Mr. Schnare said in a Friday statement.

He highlighted a March 30 email from Mr. Pawa telling two members of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s staff about a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter about his attendance at the press conference.

Mr. Pawa asked, “What should I say if she asks if I attended? No comment?”

Lemuel Srolovic, environmental protection bureau chief for the New York attorney general, advised Mr. Pawa to say nothing about his participation.

“My ask is if you speak to the reporter, to not confirm that you attended or otherwise discuss the event,” Mr. Srolovic says in the email.

Mr. Pawa said in a Sunday email to The Washington Times that it is “inaccurate in attributing to me the idea that lawsuits should be used to achieve political outcomes.”

“I have always been consistent in my position that lawsuits should be brought to remedy legal wrongs,” Mr. Pawa said in an email.

The New York attorney general’s office told Reuters that it routinely seeks input from outside organizations but pursues cases based only on the merits.

The push for legal action against climate change dissent dates back to June 2012 when climate groups held a workshop, Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

Last year, a coalition of environmentalists and lawmakers led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, petitioned the Justice Department to file a racketeering lawsuit against “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”

The collection of emails sheds new light on the close working relationship between the climate change movement and Democratic lawmakers.

The emails were obtained under the Vermont Public Records Law. Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell’s office helped Mr. Schneiderman’s staff organize the event.

In a March 30 email, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Scott Kline recommended changing the name of the Exxon/Fossil Fuel Company Investigations working group by removing the word “investigations.”

“Not all of the states have yet opened a formal investigation and there is some sensitivity here (and I suspect in some other states) to saying or indicating we have,” Mr. Kline said in an email to Mr. Srolovic.

He also recommended removing the word “progressive” from the “Climate Coalition of Attorneys General Pledge,” which originally stated, “We pledge to work together to fully enforce the State and federal laws that require progressive action on climate change and that prohibit false and misleading statements to the public, consumers and investors regarding climate change.”

Elsewhere, Mr. Kline objects to an effort by Mr. Schneiderman’s office to enter into a common interest agreement that would enable the coalition’s communications, including those with outside groups, to be protected by the privilege and thus exempt from public disclosure laws.

“Our thought has been that anyone providing anything in writing at the conference should assume that it may get produced because of some state’s public records laws,” Mr. Kline says in a March 28 email. “Matt and Peter should stick to what is in the public domain or be prepared to have those materials become public.”

Mr. Schnare said the emails “show Schneiderman’s office suggested their outside-activist green allies deceive the press; meanwhile, AGs in his coalition have subpoenaed at least one policy group’s correspondence with the media.” His reference was to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Joining Mr. Schneiderman, Mr. Sorrell and Mr. Walker at the press conference were Attorneys General George Jepsen of Connecticut, Brian E. Frosh of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Mark Herring of Virginia.

“As we all know, global warming, if not reversed, will be catastrophic for our planet,” said Mr. Sorrell. “We, the states, have a role to play in this endeavor and intend to do our part.”

Several Republican attorneys general have called the coalition’s effort an attack on free speech.

“This scientific and political debate is healthy, and it should be encouraged,” said a March 30 joint statement by Attorneys General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma and Luther Strange of Alabama.

“It should not be silenced with threats of criminal prosecution by those who believe that their position is the only correct one and that all dissenting voices must therefore be intimidated and coerced into silence,” they said. “It is inappropriate for State Attorneys General to use the power of their office to attempt to silence core political speech on one of the major policy debates of our time.”

Both have joined a lawsuit filed by 26 attorneys general challenging the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which requires strict emissions reductions in the name of combating climate change.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.